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Ta da! One week of working on this (including downtime on Saturday's long preparation for the showcase) allowed me to get the top of one of the arches of the background done. I know it's not much, but at least it looks more like something than insanity.

On my crochet front, during the week I finished the accessories for the snowman. I'll take a picture when he's fully assembled. I also started working on the gingerbread house. I have 3 out of 4 walls done.

Another hobby of mine is writing. I know I don't speak of it often. Probably because I don't do it as often as I probably should and it's not very easy to show. I bring this up because it is almost a month away from NaNoWriMo. What is NaNoWriMo you ask? It's a challenge during the month of November to write a 50,000 word novel. I've participated the past two years and completed the challenge. I have yet to edit those novels but one is currently in a more publishable state than the other. I'm …

I did the skirts last weekend. The underskirt was a lot of fabric and a little slippery. Monday I added the hooks to the neck and tried it on to get the placement for the back strap's hook. While trying it on I realized the skirt was way too long. It looked like I had a mermaid style smooth gown on. I had a dress with that silhouette but that's not what I was going for.

So, time to chop off several inches, from the top of the skirts, hike up where it's stretched as much as possible and gather the underskirt where it attaches. I didn't want to lose the tendrils coming down from the roses so I cut around those and placed them over the skirt. I'm still not completely happy, but it worked for the showcase. I need to readjust two straps and maybe take up the front a bit more. After that I just need to stone it. I need a combination of light siam, indian siam, siam, fire opal, and sunflower crystal in various sizes.

Yesterday, September 29th, was the Hollywood Showcase which I had been preparing a jive and my rose dress for. I woke up at 9am in preparation. Now keep in mind, although 9 is better than 7, I usually don't wake up until 10:30-11am. I ate breakfast and put the last few items, needle and thread just in case, into my bag that I packed the night before. Shortly after 10am I left my house and headed to Manhattan to the location of the showcase. The garage I had picked out earlier was right across the street and shortly before 11am I headed into the venue.

The location is the Martin Luther King Jr. High School Auditorium. One, I have no idea how the location was chosen, and two I'm curious to know how often they rent it out. Anyway, with my rolling duffel bag, and my dress hanging over my shoulder to keep the bottom off the ground (I did have it in a plastic garment bag my dress for the after party came in) I walked up a flight of stairs to the main entrance. I then proceeded down…

Woo hoo! New season stars tonight and I'm back to blogging about it. I'm writing this from Dance with Me NJ's kick off party. So I'm dancing, or watching others dance, in the commercial breaks. It's also projected onto a red wall so everyone is really orange.

Here we go.

Joey and Kym. High energy, not bad with the footwork, could've used more hips to make the cuban breaks more fluid. Technique wasn't right for the locksteps. Kym's outfit's is a bit odd. I'll agree with the scores.

Shawn and Derek. Song is not a foxtrot. It's a cha cha. Dress is an off length, what my rose dress looked like before I shortened it. Too fast for a foxtrot. danced well but just odd as a foxtrot. Carrie anne gave too high a score.

Sabrina and Louis. I like her dress. Very sharp. Although I didn't see a lot of hip action. Everything was very up on straight legs with no settling although it was hard at that speed. Seems like a very 'Louis like' routine.…

I mentioned in my last post I bought DMC floss for about 12 projects. Here's a picture of the pile. I sorted the majority of it into the kits and the remainder will go into my main system.

I have cut my fabric and sorted all my floss for the next cross-stitch project, In the Garden. I'll be starting it right after I post this.

On another front, I picked up this black and white abstract knit. It's thin and stretchy. I'll figure out something to do with it.

Picked up the following patterns as well.

I'm almost done with the rose dress. I tried it on today and after a little tweaking on the top, I'm sure it won't fail on me at the showcase next week. The skirt's a little long so I'm going to have to hike it up.

I'm sure you all remember my chart stash I bought the other week. Well, I got almost all of the dmc thread needed to kit up 12 designs. Yes, 12. Two of which were already in my stash. I figure I'll have enough of some colors left over for later charts as well. As there is a bbq at work friday, I'll probably be let out early so I can make another stop at Where Victoria's Angels stitch for specialty fibers and fabric. Then I hurry home and finish the skirt of my dress. I ned a test run of it Saturday.My only dilemma is which to start first? As of right now I can start In The Garden as I'll be using the bolt of 18 ct aida I have. May also be able to start Stroke of Midnight, Celestial Dragon, Garnet Fairy, and Fantasy Triptych if I use the 28 ct fabric insanity used to be on and not get new 32 ct or a different color than antique white. In current order of calling to me they are:
In The Garden
Garnet fairy
Dragon carousel
Celestial dragon
Tropical dream
A dragons Best…

Once again I don't have much progress on insanity. It's lots of color changes with small spots of similar colors. It takes a little under an hour to do 50 stitches on average.

I spent most of Sunday working on the rose dress. I also accidentally cut my right index finger with my rotary cutter. It wasn't very deep but it still smarted so I started crocheting the snowman.

I realize the picture is rotated wrong but I don't feel like trying to fix it at the moment. I worked on this Monday night as well. I figured out Tuesday that was a good idea.

I've started bringing smaller travel friendly projects with me to work on during my lunch break and the time I have between dinner and the start of dancing on Tuesday (thus the pumpkins getting done so quickly.) I brought lil jack + the kitty to work this week. Poking my finger with the needle was not fun. I learned by Wednesday to get around that or it had healed enough not to smart. But I managed to finish it. Ta da!

I spent the majority of Sunday working on this dress. I hemmed the bodice and put the elastic in. I also created the collar and straps. I attached those and the bra. I also trimmed the excess fabric from the bottom so I could actually dance in the dress but not enough to cut the rose design off. This caused it to be higher in the front than the back. I'm really tall for a latin dancer so I managed to not have to cut any of the printed design off. I'm not sure how this design would've fared with a shorter dancer.

Now I just need to make the skirt and attach the hooks to the collar and back strap.

Something odd I noticed when I went to put the dress form on the pole, the knob to tighten the screw to hold it in place broke off. It's not thin plastic either. I need to figure out how to fix it before I make a smooth dress.

Another busy week coupled with the fact that I spent the majority of my free time over the weekend working on my dress caused me not to have that much done on insanity.
I did however manage to finish my three pumpkins this week (and had a full ball left over) and also started the snowman tonight as my brain was too tired to deal with insanity.

Although I haven't managed to work on certain projects as I would like, I got more stash. I had to go to joann's to pick up thread for my dress last week. While there, I have a tendency to rummange through the other departments to see if anything catches my eye. Although the cross-stitch section isn't all that great, I did find the following:

Sebastian and Sebastian rose by Design Works.
I was tempted by two other designs featuring a white cat and a leopard purse and one with a leopard shoe, but I prefered these for some reason, maybe Onyx had an influence. They came as a pack. While looking for the pictures, I came across one other…

I have begun my next dress, which I have names 'roses' in the labels. I have less than four weeks to complete it. Thankfully due to labor day I had an extra day so I got a fair amount done.
First, I shall present the pieces that came in my fabric set. I received 3 pieces of the following shaded fabric. The bodysuit and skirt will be cut from these:

Next, I received four pieces of organza for the underskirt (2 were extra), pre-cut into circles:

This piece of the same material as the first three, but with the added roses, are for the main body of the dress.

The coiled wad is horsehair braid printed with a similar pattern to the fabric for use on the bottom of the skirts. I have eight 7 ft pieces. The fabric on the right is the pattern printed on nude mesh for the gloves. When I'm tan for competitions, there will be an illusion of the leopard being tatooed on my arms.
The last piece is for bracelets and the collar.